In late September 2001, President George W. Bush urged Americans to go shopping in support of the slumping US economy, equating purchasing with patriotism in the aftermath of 9/11. Intrigued by this sentiment, Chicago-based artist Brian Ulrich took to the malls with his camera, beginning what would become a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of our consumer-dominated culture. Ulrich’s large-scale photographs of shoppers shopping are displayed in “CORNUCOPIA: DOCUMENTING THE LAND OF PLENTY,” at the Montserrat College of Art Gallery through February 2, along with work by Xing Danwen, Chris Jordan, Portia Munson, and JeongMee Yoon, whose approaches to the subject range from depictions of mountains of American E-trash in China to portraits of small girls and boys in their, respectively, pink and blue bedrooms, nearly lost in a sea of gender-toned plastic. On November 29, at 8 pm, Ulrich joins Montserrat Gallery director/curator Leonie Bradbury for a discussion of consumer culture, documentary photography as protest, and more, in the second installment of Montserrat’s new “Contemporary Cocktail” series, in which art is discussed in a lounge-style atmosphere. DJ Diamond provides the music, and admission is $10; RSVP to gallery@montserrat.edu.

Massachusetts’s miniature-golf scene (who knew there was one!) is the guiding spirit behind “WHALE ISLAND: MINIATURE-GOLF-INSPIRED WORKS BY BRIAN BUTLER,” which opens at Mass College of Art’s Godine Gallery on November 26. The exhibition is an outgrowth of Butler’s recent US ProMinigolf Association–sanctioned project “Mini-Golf Across Massachusetts,” which involved exploring every miniature-golf course in Massachusetts last June in order to analyze the state of the small green across the commonwealth. The show includes photographs, mixed-media drawings, and a large-scale, interactive mini-golf installation by this Mass Art senior.

Since opening in Lowell in July 2005, Gallery 119 has maintained a tradition of annual juried shows on open-ended themes that draw in diverse artists. Its Third Annual Juried Show, “SEEK ALTERNATE ROUTES,” juried by Jed Speare (current director of Boston’s Studio Soto and former director of Mobius Artists Group) and opening November 27, explores any and all aspects of the topic of finding different paths. Although the show’s logo is the familiar, yellow diamond-shaped highway sign indicating a detour, the work is bound to head out in unexpected directions.

Waste management One of the essential lessons I’ve gleaned from the magazine Martha Stewart Living is that if you put together a collection of junk that’s all the same color, it’s almost always interesting to look at.

No war, okay? You’d be forgiven for wondering why you should show up at the New England Mobilization to End the War in Iraq.

Exit Zarqawi Without the Bush Administration’s negligent management of post-Saddam Iraq, Zarqawi couldn’t have been as brutally effective as he was. Pentagon briefing

How to neuter the Republicans A heavy burden lay upon the first convention of the “netroots” — that amorphous mass of progressive activists participating in blogs and grassroots organizations outside of the Democratic Party — in Las Vegas earlier this month. Netrooting for Dems: Ten blogs to bookmark for the ’08 race. By David S. Bernstein

Camera bluff Even as critics and moviegoers alike have scorned the surge of movies related to the War on Terror and Iraq, Nina Davenport has quietly been making illuminating, fair-minded, and entertaining films on these topics.

Female Trouble Conventional political wisdom says that for a party to oppose a woman — or a women's issue — it's best to send out a female spokesperson.

McCain in the membrane Four tracks into his Monday Monster Jam performance, Brooklyn rap czar Jay-Z stops the music and points to a freeze-frame image of George W. Bush on the titanic screen above the TD Banknorth Garden stage.

Going both ways Right now John McCain is doing better than he and the Republicans deserve.

Frill rides Looking back on a time when action sequences unfolded without the currently fashionable veil of rapid editing and CGI.

THE NATURE OF THE BEAST | September 10, 2008 In the world of graphic novelist Kevin Hooyman, whose show opens at Proof Gallery on September 13, packed line drawings take you deep into strange and fantastical scenes.

I AM I SAID | September 03, 2008 Tufts University Art Gallery presents “Empire And Its Discontents,” which opens September 15 with work by 11 artists tied to previously colonized regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.